NEW YORK (AP) — A book project founded by director-writer Michael Mann has found a home with HarperCollins Publishers.

The Harper imprint William Morrow told The Associated Press on Tuesday that it had acquired three novels to be released through Michael Mann books. The novels, all co-authored by Mann and currently untitled, will include a collaboration with "The Cartel" author Don Winslow on a story based on the lives of crime bosses Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana and a prequel to Mann's original screenplay for his acclaimed thriller "Heat."

"In my work, what always fuels my imagination is moving among the people and within the sub-cultures in which the story I'm telling actually takes place," said Mann, whose credits range from the TV series "Miami Vice" to "The Insider" and other feature films. "There have been characters, events, stories, which I thought were very rich, but which had to go untold."

Mann first announced his imprint last month, saying he hoped to publish fiction and nonfiction and have the books adapted for film and television. The first of the Mann books, his novel with Winslow, is scheduled for 2017.

"This project is the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition," Winslow said in a statement. "The Accardo-Giancana story with its dual protagonists is the intense, organized crime epic that I've been waiting to write my whole career. The range of people is immense, the locations vast, the real-life events the stuff of a fiction writer's dreams."

I dug up the scene in Miami Vice where Sonny's in the boat with Gong Li and she says "I am a businesswoman. I don't need a husband to have a house to live in," and he reacts by reaching over and fastening her seatbelt.